Teenagers have always done bad and good things. What is tragically different about this horrifying rape, in a Pitt Meadows rave house, is that it reveals how new technology can so casually unleash a Pandora's box of evil.

The depravity exposed when a Metro Vancouver teenager displayed photos on the Internet of a Saturday night gang rape has people shocked about the moral decline of today’s young people.

But something else about this repugnant incident looms more important than a debate over what it is about contemporary teens that led a group of males to rape a young woman at a drug-filled rave party on a Pitt Meadows property (above) and graphically let others know about it.

Tragically, young people (and old) have done terrible things since human history began. At least since the time of the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, adults have complained the current generation of teenagers was not as ethically upstanding as they themselves had been.

However, this terrible recorded sexual assault, even when combined with other examples of youthful wrongdoing in the 21st century, does not prove most teenagers are going bad.

Anyone can come up with myriad counter-examples of positive things done by young people today, including protecting the environment, volunteering at food banks and opposing racism.

What is tragically different about this horrifying rape is that it reveals how new technology, specifically social media, can so casually unleash a Pandora’s box of evil.

This incident warns us that, in addition to continuing to combat sexual assaults, our entire society must find a way to deal with novel technology that hands a frenzied young nobody the devastating power to offer photo images of a vicious sex assault to anyone.

What’s worse, when these violent sex photos landed on the World Wide Web, they went “viral,” watched by possibly tens or even hundreds of thousands of people, presumably young and old.

The photos went viral even though they amounted to illegal child pornography.

Despite the fact that they will further traumatize the rape victim -and people connected with her, and others.

Despite how they will feed many peoples’ growing addiction to sordid, often-violent online sex, a scourge that is destroying relationships and individuals.

Truly, we are not as a society keeping a lid on the new powers associated with Internet technology and social media, which teens and adults have been so vigorously embracing — usually to benignly tell anyone who is interested about their latest party, mall visit or trip.

Even though Facebook officials said they took down the Pitt Meadows rape photos after police became aware of them on Sunday, copies had already been downloaded and have since gone into circulation. They won’t go neatly back into Pandora’s box.

Given such incidents, it’s odd we still tend to think of technology as morally neutral.

Indeed, rather than fret about technology, most of us are inclined to celebrate it, like the way we routinely talk about “technological advances.”

However, this one B.C. young person’s sadistic decision to display photos of a rape online throws it in our face: Technology can have a dark side.

The evil associated with that rape has now been spread further than would have been imaginable just 15 years ago.

Teens will always be a mix of good and bad. However, as a society, we have not been able to catch up with the licence that the Internet has given creeps, young or old, to devastate the lives of others.

New technology always comes as a mixed blessing. The industrialization that made it possible to build more products also led to millions of people working brutish jobs in underground mines or on assembly lines.

The automobile gave people the ability to travel faster, but led to untold fatalities. Only recently, with governments demanding seatbelts and air-bags, have traffic deaths been decreasing.

Television and film made it possible for billions to be entertained and informed, but also brought teenagers and adults an endless flood of trivial, salacious and gratuitously violent moving images.

If justice prevails, those linked with this Pitt Meadows crime will pay dearly for it.

Just as importantly, this shocking incident may help the rest of us recognize that our generation is witnessing new “advances” in communications technology that are in some ways out of control.

While a few laws have been put in place to deal with the Internet’s unparalleled ability to spread child pornography and invade privacy, it won’t be simple for governments and businesses to preserve Internet freedom while further protecting human decency.

We have a long way to go to properly regulate, and educate ourselves about, this brave new high-tech world.

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